1970 Vietnam War: The United States turns over control of the air base at Bình Thủy in the Mekong Delta to South Vietnam.
On This Day In
On This Day In
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Binh Thuy Air Base was a United States Air Force (USAF), United States Navy, Republic of Vietnam Air Force (RVNAF) and Vietnam People's Air Force (VPAF) (Khong Quan Nhan Dan Viet Nam) military airfield used during the Vietnam War. It is located 7 km northwest of Cần Thơ in the Mekong Delta.
South Vietnam, officially the Republic of Vietnam, was a country in Southeast Asia that existed from 1955 to 1975. It first garnered international recognition in 1949 as the associated State of Vietnam within the French Union, with its capital at Saigon. Since 1950, it was a member of the...
1967 Iberia Flight 062 crashes in Blackdown, West Sussex, killing all 37 people on board including British actress June Thorburn.
Blackdown, or Black Down, summit elevation 279.7 metres (918 ft) AMSL, is the highest point in both the historic county of Sussex and the South Downs National Park. It is one of the highest points in the south east of England, exceeded by Walbury Hill, Leith Hill and Pilot Hill. Blackdown is...
Patricia June Thorburn-Smith was a popular English actress whose career was cut short by her death in an air crash.
1966 The Arno River floods Florence, Italy, to a maximum depth of 6.7 m (22 ft), leaving thousands homeless and destroying millions of masterpieces of art and rare books. Venice is also submerged on the same day at its record all-time acqua alta of 194 cm (76 in).
The 1966 Venice flood was an unprecedented high water, known in Venice as an "acqua alta", with waters reaching up to 194 cm.
An acqua alta is an exceptional tide peak that occurs periodically in the northern Adriatic Sea. The term is applied to such tides in the Italian region of Veneto. The peaks reach their maximum in the Venetian Lagoon, where they cause partial flooding of Venice and Chioggia; flooding also occurs...
1966 The Arno River floods Florence, Italy, to a maximum depth of 6.7 m (22 ft), leaving thousands homeless and destroying millions of masterpieces of art and rare books. Venice is also submerged on the same day at its record all-time acqua alta of 194 cm (76 in).
The 1966 flood of the Arno in Florence killed 35 people and damaged or destroyed millions of masterpieces of art and rare books. It is considered the worst flood in the city's history since 1557. With the combined effort of Italian and foreign volunteers alike, or angeli del fango, many of...
Florence is the capital city of the Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in its metropolitan province as of 2025.
1962 The United States concludes Operation Fishbowl, its final above-ground nuclear weapons testing series, in anticipation of the 1963 Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
Nuclear weapons tests are experiments carried out to determine the performance of nuclear weapons and the effects of their explosion. Over 2,000 nuclear weapons tests have been carried out since 1945. Nuclear testing is a sensitive political issue. Governments have often performed tests to...
The Partial Test Ban Treaty (PTBT), formally known as the 1963 Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water, prohibited all test detonations of nuclear weapons except for those conducted underground. It is also abbreviated as the Limited Test Ban Treaty...
1960 At the Kasakela Chimpanzee Community in Tanzania, Jane Goodall observes chimpanzees creating tools, the first-ever observation in non-human animals.
Dame Valerie Jane Morris Goodall was an English primatologist and anthropologist. Regarded as a pioneer in primate ethology, and described by many publications as "the world's preeminent chimpanzee expert", she was best known for more than six decades of field research on the social and family...
The eastern chimpanzee is a subspecies of the common chimpanzee. It is native to the Central African Republic, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, and Tanzania.
1956 Soviet troops enter Hungary to end the Hungarian revolution against the Soviet Union that started on October 23. Thousands are killed, more are wounded, and nearly a quarter million leave the country.
The Hungarian Revolution of 1956, also known as the Hungarian Uprising, was an attempted countrywide revolution against the government of the Hungarian People's Republic (1949–1989) and the policies caused by the government's subordination to the Soviet Union (USSR). The uprising lasted 15 days...
October 23 is the 296th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar; 69 days remain until the end of the year.
1956 Soviet troops enter Hungary to end the Hungarian revolution against the Soviet Union that started on October 23. Thousands are killed, more are wounded, and nearly a quarter million leave the country.
The Hungarian People's Republic (HPR) was a landlocked country in Central Europe from its formation on 20 August 1949 until the establishment of the current Republic of Hungary on 23 October 1989. It was a professed communist state, governed first by the Hungarian Working People's Party and...
1952 The United States government establishes the National Security Agency, or NSA.
The National Security Agency (NSA) is an intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the director of national intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collection, and processing of information and data for global intelligence...
1946 UNESCO constitution comes into force: UNESCO’s constitution entered into force, creating a UN agency devoted to education, science and culture and promoting international collaboration.
1944 World War II: Operation Pheasant, an Allied offensive to liberate North Brabant in the Netherlands, ends successfully.
North Brabant, also unofficially called Brabant or Dutch Brabant, is a province in the south of the Netherlands. It borders the provinces of South Holland and Gelderland to the north, Limburg to the east, Zeeland to the west, and Belgium's provinces of Antwerp and Limburg to the south. The...
The Netherlands is a country in Northwestern Europe, with overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. The Netherlands consists of twelve provinces; it borders Germany to the east and Belgium to the south, with a...
1944 World War II: The 7th Macedonian Liberation Brigade liberates Bitola for the Allies.
Bitola is a city in the southwestern part of North Macedonia. It is located in the southern part of the Pelagonia valley, surrounded by the Baba, Nidže, and Kajmakčalan mountain ranges, 14 kilometres north of the Medžitlija-Níki border crossing with Greece. The city stands at an important...
1942 World War II: Disobeying a direct order by Adolf Hitler, General Field Marshal Erwin Rommel begins a retreat of his forces after a costly defeat during the Second Battle of El Alamein. The retreat would ultimately last five months.
Johannes Erwin Eugen Rommel, popularly known as The Desert Fox, was a German Generalfeldmarschall during World War II. He served in the Wehrmacht of Nazi Germany, as well as in the Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic, and the Imperial German Army of the German Empire.
The Second Battle of El Alamein was a battle of the Second World War that took place near the Egyptian railway halt of El Alamein. The First Battle of El Alamein and the Battle of Alam el Halfa had prevented the Axis from advancing further into Egypt.
1939 World War II: U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt orders the United States Customs Service to implement the Neutrality Act of 1939, allowing cash-and-carry purchases of weapons by belligerents.
The United States Customs Service was a federal law enforcement agency of the U.S. federal government. Established on July 31, 1789, it collected import tariffs, performed other selected border security duties, as well as conducted criminal investigations.
The Neutrality Acts were a series of acts passed by the US Congress in 1935, 1936, 1937, and 1939 in response to the growing threats and wars that led to World War II. They were spurred by the growth in isolationism and non-interventionism in the US following the US joining World War I, and they...
1939 World War II: U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt orders the United States Customs Service to implement the Neutrality Act of 1939, allowing cash-and-carry purchases of weapons by belligerents.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, also known as FDR, was the 32nd president of the United States, serving from 1933 until his death in 1945. A member of the Democratic Party, he is the longest-serving U.S. president, as well as the only one to have served more than two terms. His first two terms were...
1936 Spanish Civil War: Largo Caballero reshuffles his war cabinet, persuading the anarcho-syndicalist CNT to join the government.
Anarcho-syndicalism is an anarchist organisational model that centres trade unions as a vehicle for class conflict. Drawing from the theory of libertarian socialism and the practice of syndicalism, anarcho-syndicalism sees trade unions as both a means to achieve immediate improvements to working...
The Confederación Nacional del Trabajo is a Spanish anarcho-syndicalist trade union confederation.
1936 Spanish Civil War: Largo Caballero reshuffles his war cabinet, persuading the anarcho-syndicalist CNT to join the government.
A cabinet reshuffle or shuffle occurs when a head of government rotates or changes the composition of ministers in their cabinet, or when the head of state changes the head of government and a number of ministers. They are more common in parliamentary systems than in systems where cabinet heads...
A war cabinet is a committee formed by a government in a time of war to efficiently and effectively conduct that war. It is usually a subset of the full executive cabinet of ministers, although it is quite common for a war cabinet to have senior military officers and opposition politicians as...
1936 Spanish Civil War: Largo Caballero reshuffles his war cabinet, persuading the anarcho-syndicalist CNT to join the government.
Francisco Largo Caballero was a Spanish politician and trade unionist who served as the prime minister of the Second Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War. He was one of the historic leaders of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and of the Workers' General Union (UGT). Although...
1924 Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming becomes the first female elected as governor in the United States.
Wyoming is a landlocked state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It borders Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the southwest, and Colorado to the south. With an estimated population of 587,618 as of...
1922 In Egypt, British archaeologist Howard Carter and his men find the entrance to Tutankhamun's tomb in the Valley of the Kings.
Tutankhamun or Tutankhamen, was the thirteenth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty of ancient Egypt, who ruled c. 1333 – 1323 BC. Born Tutankhaten, he instituted the restoration of the traditional polytheistic form of ancient Egyptian religion, undoing a previous shift to the religion known as...
The Valley of the Kings, also known as the Valley of the Gates of the Kings, is an area in Egypt where, for a period of nearly 500 years from the Eighteenth Dynasty to the Twentieth Dynasty, rock-cut tombs were excavated for pharaohs and powerful nobles under the New Kingdom of ancient Egypt.
1921 Japanese prime minister Hara Takashi is assassinated in Tokyo.
Hara Takashi , informally known as Hara Kei, was a Japanese politician who served as the Prime Minister of Japan from 1918 until his assassination. Hara was the first commoner and first Christian appointed to be Prime Minister of Japan, and was given the moniker of "commoner prime minister" .